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Blue Bottle Coffee Now Dripping In Wynwood

by lee klein on Tue Jul 3 2018

I am a coffee bean – I mean coffee nut. Forgive me: Over the past few hours I’ve sampled three types of Blue Bottle Coffee and my fingers are flying faster than my mind. Somehow I was hoping for the opposite effect.

First time I sipped this brand was during a visit to San Francisco in December of 2010. Upon my return, after sampling numerous Bay Area drip coffees, I wrote an article called “Miami Needs One-Cup-At-A-Time Coffee Shops.” Within a year, a couple of such places opened, the most prominent being Panther Coffee. Nowadays we’ve got quite a few, including, more recently, Blue Bottle Coffee in the Design District (3838 NE 1st Ave).

The Blue Bottle story goes like this: In the early 2000s, in Oakland, California, a freelance musician and coffee lunatic, disgusted with “stale, overly roasted beans” offered commercially, decided to open a roaster for people who would appreciate his vow: “I will only sell coffee less than 48 hours out of the roaster to my guests, so they may enjoy coffee at peak flavor.” Turns out lots of people bought into his vision, as Bottle Coffee has grown to a widening network of cafes throughout the Bay Area, Los Angeles, New York, Washington D.C. and Boston, with outlets in Tokyo and Kyoto, too. Did I mention the Aventura branch?

The bags of beans are stamped with the date of roasting. My samples came from Blue Bottle roasters in Bushwick, Brooklyn; the package arrived the day after roasting. Here’s what I received in my Blend Box, a trio of 6-ounce bags of coffee beans:

Giant Steps: Ugandan and Sumatran beans. “An ultra-balanced, dense, and chocolatey cup that stands up to cream quite well.” “If this coffee were any heavier-bodied, you could pour it on pancakes.” “Deliciousness: Viscous, fudgy, substantial.”

Three Africas: The radiant fruit of two coffees from Ethiopia (one washed, one natural) with a washed coffee from Central Africa. Notes of chocolate and fruit. “Deliciousness: Fruity, radiant, creamy.”

The good folks at Blue Bottle “fanatically” taste each coffee to “determine the precise days on which it will achieve peak flavor” (the Hayes Valley Espresso, for example, “really sings on days 4-7”). There’s a chart to let you know precisely when “you can experience our coffee at the absolute summit of deliciousness.” Seriously: The coffee really is special.

At this juncture, coffee lovers, you’ve got two options:

Trust my impeccable judgment regarding coffee and order some online right away.

OR:

Visit the Blue Bottle Café in the Design District and try it for yourself (with natural light streaming against painted concrete walls). While you're there, cozy up to the Cold Bar and sip zero-proof coffee cocktails.